


The Happening

by orphan_account



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Banter, Exaggeration, Gen, Sleep, everyone makes fun of Noct, holy shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-26 23:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6259798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The towns are burning down, the oceans are flooding over, the gates of Hell are opening and unleashing demons into the mortal realm because <i>holy crap,</i> Noctis was the first to wake up this morning!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happening

Holy shit.

Ho-lee _shit._

"Y-your highness?" Ignis' voice shook with utter astonishment, his hand clutched around his cell phone as the alarm blared for all to hear.

This can't be real. This genuinely cannot be real. Was he still sleeping? Were the boundaries between the dream world and reality finally converging? Did Prompto sneak some kind of questionable hallucinogen into last night's stew? Where did everything go so wrong?

An anomaly, an aberration, abnormal, all these words and theories bouncing around in his brain and not a single one of them concluded that what sat before him was anywhere _near_ the realm of possibility.

He felt his very _soul_ itch as this Noctis-apparition/illusion/whatever turned his head and _spoke._ "What?"

Maybe Noctis should have just faked being asleep that morning, because he recognized the look Ignis was giving him: the frowning lips, the furrowed brows, the worried eyes. Now he's even crawling over to him across the tent floor.

"Uh, can I help y—" Noct didn't even get to finish, because the next thing he knew, Ignis was slapping a palm against his forehead.

"Are you sick?" he doted anxiously, giving Noct a once, twice, thrice-over as if he'd encounter chocobopox blisters somewhere on him. "Was last night's dinner not to your liking?"

Annoyed with the pestering and completely baffled, Noct swatted him away. "What? No, I'm fine," he protested, self-consciously crossing his arms over himself as though he'd been utterly violated. "You know," he shot irritably, "most people would start the day off with a 'good morning' instead of molesting the poor guy nearest to them."

"I wasn't _molesting_ you, your highness," Ignis harrumphed in an effort to regain his composure. "I was simply trying to see how you were doing. Quite frankly, I'm offended that you think I'm even capable of doing something so indecent."

"Yeah, well-" Noctis was interrupted by another voice whining on the other side of the tent.

"This is _not_ how I wanted to wake up," Prompto complained, rising into a sitting position with Gladio waking up right behind him. Gladio and Prompto—you know, people who actually had _respect_ for the natural order of the universe.

"Agreed," Gladio grunted. "Hearing you guys blabber is worse than any damn phone alarm." He began to stretch out. "So, Igs, why do you look more peeved than usual on this fine summer day?"

At the mention of the phone alarm, Ignis finally disabled it with a few quick taps. The man appeared unnervingly haunted as he fixed a hard gaze on his friends. "Noctis woke up this morning," he announced grimly. His words were met with silence.

Then, Prompto began to clap—slow, drawn out, and comically awkward. "Congratulations, Noct!" he cheered flatly.

"...that's it?" Noct asked incredulously, turning to Ignis with furrowed eyebrows. "That's what you nearly smacked my lights back out for?"

Gladio shrugged. "I don't see what the problem is," he admitted. "At least he actually _woke up_ this morning, if you catch my drift."

"He woke up _first._ " Ignis hissed.

The apprehensive silence that his words received was immensely gratifying. Prompto and Gladio now fully realized the gravity of this situation; their eyes were wide, their jaws hung, releasing loud gasps as Gladio looked to the heavens above and asked for an answer on _how this was even possible—_

Actually, he was just rolling his eyes.

"Yeah?" Gladio snorted, discarding his horrified expression. "Did you want to watch him sleep or whatever? He probably heard something out there. Actually..." He hurried into a tense, defensive stance at that possibility.

"I didn't hear anything," Noct assured him. Gladio relaxed.

Ignis, gentleman that he is, decided to ignore Gladio's initial quip and scoffed. "Nonsense. Noctis isn't able to hear anything in his sleep."

"True that," Gladio concurred, throwing up his hands in defeat. "You couldn't wake him even if Etro came to rapture everyone's souls."

"You couldn't wake him if he was falling through the sky," Ignis supplied.

"You couldn't even wake him in the middle of a shootout," Prompto cackled. "I remember one time I accidentally shut my shotgun off while he was sleeping, and you no what happened? Nothing! He didn't even flinch." He scooted over to Noct, just so he could lightly flick the prince on his cheek. "You're lucky you don't live in the slums of Niflheim!"

Noct made some kind of disapproving coughing noise at the back of his throat. "You can too wake me up. I've been waking up all this time, haven't I?"

"Barely," Gladio replied. "If we weren't being hunted down to the fourth circle of hell, we'd all have to deal with your _morning ritual._ " He nudged the prince cheekily. "You know the one."

That got a chuckle out of Ignis. "Oh ho, I know what you mean," he said. "Somebody always had to come around to his room at least three times just to make sure he's out of bed." Ignis' words implied annoyance, but his voice and his gaze were tinged with mirth.

Prompto nodded. "I've always had to yank his covers away to get him to wake up. Boy, did he get _maaad..._ "

"And he's ready to fight anyone who wakes him up," Gladio snickered. "Did I tell you about the time we almost threw hands at six in the morning?"

"Hey now—" Noct's interjection went ignored as the tent was filled with laughter at his expense.

"And then," Prompto giggled in between words. "and then when he _does_ wake up, he sits on the side of his bed and just stays there for ten minutes with this deep look on his face, like he's contemplating world hunger or something!"

Noctis, growing more ornery by the minute at this teasing, was successful in his second intervention. "Am I not here or something?" Noctis he growled, all crotchety. "All that happened was that I woke up, everyone else was asleep, I didn't feel like going back to sleep, so I stayed awake and waited. That's all; just the human instincts of a human being."

"You just don't get it, your highness." Ignis' tone was ominous. "There has been a specific order for when we all wake up: me, then Prompto, then Gladio, then you. It has been that way since childhood—perhaps since birth. It's practically a law of the universe. Breaking this law will no doubt rouse some...ramifications."

"What, you mean we're all gonna start dying or something?" Noctis snorted, and just to get a good rise out of Ignis, flung a hand to his heart. "Oh no..." he wheezed for air, guffawing as Ignis choked on his own spit. "I think it's already happening!"

"Don't you think you're just a _little_ bit superstitious, Igs?" Gladio asked, holding up his thumb and his forefinger as if there was a pinch of salt between them.

"Wait a minute, guys." Prompto suddenly positioning himself onto his knees with a very serious expression on his face. "I think Ignis is onto something here."

"Oh lord," Noctis groaned, but quieted down when Gladio gave his shoulder a quick pat.

"Alright, Prom," the larger man offered with a tinge of amusement in his voice. "Let's hear it."

The blonde was only too happy to continue.

"Listen! I remember writing a paper on this once. What we're experiencing right now is a paradox coming true. You see, when a impossibility becomes possible, an entirely new universe is created and alters the universes around it. When Noct woke up first this morning, a new, probable world was spawned, and instead of being a parallel world line like every other universe, the sheer impact and abnormality of this change caused the line to become perpendicular and intersect with our own world line and several other universes in its path, distorting the cosmos into absolute chaos. That means black holes will start tearing through the fabric of space and celestial bodies will start colliding with the planet's surface and UV rays will escape the stratosphere and I don't know what the _hell_ I'm talking about."

Prompto had to slump back down after that lame finish.

Noctis flashed him an assuring smile. "It's okay, Prom. I knew you were bullshitting the moment you said you wrote a paper."

The blonde sighed in exasperation. "Well then, maybe Etro flung us into an alternate universe overnight where Noct's the responsible, uptight one and Ignis is the lazy a-"

Prompto sheepishly smiled and cut himself off when he received reproachful glares from Noctis and Ignis. From Noctis, for implying that he was a lazy ass, and from Ignis, for implying that his prince was a lazy ass.

Gladio rose impatiently. "I think we've wasted enough time in here. If there's really some multiverse crap that's gonna make Duscae get shrouded in hellfire, we'll know it when we see it."

He pulled back the tent flaps...

And lo and behold! The sky was a sickly orange, the trees were alight with colorful magical flames, rows of enemies were lined up with a very unsettling hankering for human blood and unfortunately, Noctis and company were essential for a balanced breakfast. Sabertusks, goblins, garulas, goblins _on_ garulas, all lined up in legions and gathered here by some God-made coincidence to fulfill whatever prophecy Prompto just concocted 40 seconds ago.

Any fear that Gladio harbored from the sight was snuffed by a fresh, thick layer of annoyance. "It's too damn early for this," he growled.

His resignation roused the others to peer out of the tent as well. To be concise, Prompto was floored, Noctis was pissed, and Ignis was grimly silent with the revelation that he might have been right all along.

"Good God!" Prompto choked out. "Only thing we're missing are the Saberclaws!"

And then several of these ugly teal creatures dashed through the burning trees and snarled their greetings.

"What the hell?!" Prompto cried. "Why don't the Magitek troops come too, while we're at it!"

And then a bunch of Magitek infantry descended from their airships and said their hellos with friendly waves of their guns.

" _Holy—!_ " Prompto clutched a clump of his hair within his fist as the curse died on his lips. "Now all we need is Emperor Iedo—"

Noctis slapped a palm over his friend's mouth. "Prom?"

"Hm?"

"Stop talking."

And so, baffled, unwilling, and totally out of it, the four men summoned their weapons and rushed forward to meet whatever cosmos-shattering reality Noctis—ahem, Noct's _instincts_ —had created.


End file.
